Author's note: Once again, my writerly heart soared with joy at all the lovely comments and encouragement for the previous chapter of this story. Thanks so much to each and every last one of you. Mwah! Hope you enjoy this last installment.

Chapter 3: Perdita

The passage of time is a funny thing in the Chaotic Zone. The place has its own internal clock, which had always seemed like an incomprehensible mishmash to me - a clock measured in irrational and imaginary numbers, moving in increments of the square root of 5, i, e, and other less specifiable amounts.

Of course, that was before I leveled up in perceptual shifting and got myself a semi-nephil aura. Now, the motion of Chaotic time fell into more recognizable patterns. Oh sure, there was still some uncertainty, because this was the Chaotic Zone after all. But the whole of it, from a larger perspective, was absolutely predictable. It just didn't align in the slightest with Earth time.

I had the luxury of pondering such niceties now that I was riding the tides of the grand Court entertainments with relative ease. The downside was that a number of the nephil natives were getting restless with my new immunity.

They didn't try to beat Jareth up again, though. The initial nephil tussle had apparently sorted out who was dominant, and Jareth had come out on top. And word had spread.

But, boy, did nephilim know how to sulk. Resentful, accusing stares and sneers and cold shoulder treatments galore. They could give a teenager a run for his money in the pissy snit department.

Jareth minded more than I did. I could ignore tantrums. I'd had a little brother, after all.

My thoughts ran to Toby more and more these days.

"How can I tell how much time has passed in other dimensions relative to this one?"

Jareth and I stood at the entrance to my room, about to sign off for the night. Our basic interactions hadn't changed too much since That One Time After The Nephil Pissing Contest, though there was a permanent smoldering undertone to them just waiting to ignite.

Jareth tilted his head, his eyeful aura blinking slowly in flamed synchrony at me. "Thinking of those you left behind, are you?"

And I thought I'd been subtle. "And if I was?"

"I'd tell you that those on Earth fare better when Chaotic attention isn't directed at them. Which you know."

I grimaced. "I just wish I knew Toby was alright."

He drummed his talons gently against the doorframe. "It's a sickness for us, this infatuation with humans. Nephilim can get so...enamored. It's unhealthy."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "There's a story here and you're going to tell it to me."

His lips quirked into a smile that slid off the side of his face. "Am I?" But there was undeniable longing in his tone, almost a plea for release.

Say your right words. I caught his runaway smile and pressed it back on his face, stepping into him until our breaths were mingled, his inhalation coming from my exhalation. I licked his lips with a calculated flick of my tongue. "You are."

I actually saw the shudder pass through him, blurring pieces of his body in a rolling wave.

It was a power imbalance, and I knew how to leverage it, courtesy of his training. I brushed my lips against his, feeling that blurring shudder pass into my throat. "What's the story?"

The sigh unlocked inside him, like clockwork turning just so in order to spill its contents out between us in a golden clinking wave. "You've asked before if I'm the nephil that dallied with your ancestor. I'm not. But I knew him." Several phantom eyes closed all at once. "He was my closest friend."

"You're not friends anymore, then?" Which would fit with what I'd seen - Jareth was very much a loner in the nephil crowd.

"No." Bitterness, regret, and chagrin oozed from the walls, running black, blue, and turquoise. "And I knew his infatuation would be his destruction, a mortal infection that would consume him utterly. None of us understood why he would let such a thing run rampant inside of him. It was one thing to dally, another to...well, to be made so vulnerable, so brittle by a more binding commitment - it was obscene. At any rate, I did what I thought best to save him from himself. I led the...intervention against their union."

"Intervention sounds so very polite. What exactly did you do?"

All the flaming eyes of his aura flared at once. "We bent her mind in front of him until it tore itself into little confetti pieces just to escape."

"Ah." I sucked in a whistle. "I'm assuming he didn't take that well."

Phantom flames flickered around him. "Did you know that nephilim can do the most extraordinary things if they're willing to give up everything to do it?"

My eyebrows raised. "What, you guys can do a death curse?"

"Quite. A spectacular one, really. The entirety of our essence packs a wallop. And his death curse, as you so charmingly put it, concentrated all on me."

"Predictably so, given your role in his love's flamboyant disintegration. So? What'd he do?"

His smile flitted wryly to and fro like a drunken dragonfly. "Can't you guess?"

I tracked his smile for a few moments as I thought, and then grabbed it and stuck it back on his face as realization hit. "So that's where your interest in me originates. Is it tied to the descendant line, or just humans in general?"

"The descendant line. Nicely symmetric as curses go - I crusaded against his love of that human, so I was afflicted by an unholy awareness and infatuation with all the progeny of that line, an outcast among my fellow nephilim." His lips twisted. "I still don't get invited to many parties."

"Eh, nephil parties suck anyway." I shook myself, trying not to be drawn into comforting him. That was a reflexive response I didn't need to cultivate. "Meanwhile, that's why everyone gives me the extra special stinkeye around here?"

"More or less. Though that semi-nephil aura of yours actually makes you less of an abomination for some of them. You're not quite so beneath them."

I snorted. "Nephilim are such a delightful race."

"We are what we are." The mismatched eyes of his aura winked at me. "But now you know."

I nodded slowly, wheels turning in my head. "Just out of curiosity, is there any sort of...end condition where that death curse is concerned? Usually these kind of things have one."

His smile flashed like lightning. "Perhaps."

"I'm not going to like it, am I?" I batted away a tendril of flame and feathers that was sidling up my leg.

His eyes gleamed from inches away, amused as hell.

I bit back a sigh. "And you're not going to tell me what it is, are you?"

"More like I can't, actually. And even if I could...I don't think I would."

"Well, that's not irritating or suspicious in the slightest."

"Priorities, honey girl. Speaking of: Weren't you interested in the state of your brother?"

I stepped back and crossed my arms. "You know something about him?"

"I do. Would you like me to show you?"

That was far too tempting an offer to be safe. "What would it cost me?"

Impatience sparked through him in swirling currents of wildfire as he took my hand in his, stroking his talons against my fingers. "Nothing. It would be a gift."

"Why?"

"I have my reasons."

Hope scraped at me, even though I knew there would be a price somewhere. It just wasn't on the front end. "How?"

"I have my ways." His talons walked a little path up my wrist. "Well? Do you want it?"

I closed my eyes, keeping my sigh on the inside. I'd probably regret this. "Yes. Yes, I do."

"Then sing with me, honey girl." His hand slid down to hold mine as he began humming the blues tune.

I shook my head in confusion. "But there aren't any words to that tune."

"Who needs words?"

He had a point, especially when it came to blues. With a shrug, I started filling in doots and dahs and dums where they seemed to fit, and things started happening.

I felt the wordless song draw from the aura we shared, a pied piper melody directing countless phantom eyes small as pixels to paint a picture for us. Like a hive mind tinted with melancholy and longing, they self-organized into what I wanted to see.

Sweet holy Enoch, Tee.

The figure of Toby floundered before us, bent forwards, braced against the hell dimension he was wading through. I recognized that particular dimension. It bordered the Chaotic Zone and bore an uncanny resemblance to Tolkien's Mordor, complete with hungry things that had a taste for manflesh.

I knew with sickening certainty that he had come to rescue me, ill-prepared and unwavering. God knows how long he'd been mired in different hell dimensions trying to reach me, or how he had slipped into one in the first place.

His all-too-human light pulsed, a tantalizing organic beacon advertising his presence. God, he didn't even know how to shield. He didn't know anything. Which was all my fault. My choice, my fault. His impending doom.

My breath stopped as I saw a pack of dark things tracking him, leading him with false glittering trails to their feeding ground. I knew those particular lures - they would snake into him and rip his mind apart, leaving tender meat for the pack to consume at their leisure.

One lure was already attached to the back of his head.

Cool purpose rushed through me, cleansing and focusing. "I have to save him." I turned to Jarerh, mustering all the force of will I had in me. "Let me save him."

Heartbeats dribbled by. "Insane yet?" It was a whisper, searching.

My impatience crackled and spit at the air. "No. And I haven't solved your Labyrinth yet either. And it's not forever and my brother is about to die. I'll come back to you. I'll promise you something new even. Just let me save him. Now." I gripped Jareth's hands with shattering force. "Jareth, please."

"Something new?" His entire face lit up as his talons clicked against my knuckles. "Something borrowed, something blue?"

"What?"

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue." His voice lilted, intoning, almost sing-song. "By thirteen hours from now, Court time. Promise me that and I'll lend you the power to travel to and fro to save your Toby."

It was undeniably a trap. That wedding rhyme struck something deep in me, resonating like a tuning fork. It was entwined with my ancestor's death curse somehow. But my brother was going to die gruesomely in the very near future and there was no time. "I promise." The words lodged inside me with a snaking crack, winding and twisting and anchoring with irresistible force. "Now give it to me."

"As you wish."

The transfer began.

I nearly choked as I felt the power fill me, flaking off him in pieces, glittering and fulsome, a billion billion ants climbing through the constructed paths from his internal labyrinth to mine. When it was done, I knew without looking that a phantom multiplicity of mismatched eyes blinked around me, amidst flame and feathers. Borrowed power, and it fit me like a swarming glove.

Jareth looked naked without it. Almost human really, but for those talons. I knew with aching certainty that he wasn't meant to give me all his aura, and it was costing him to do so.

I mashed that thought down and looked at him for another heartbeat, letting the gratitude kiss through me to him. "Thank you."

"Just for you, honey girl." His voice had a pained wheeze to it. "Now go."

I focused on Toby. It was so utterly easy to go to him now. I could see the inter-dimensional stuff as glittering sands to be shaped into just the right bridge at my mental touch. No ritual courting required. The stuff was just jumping to do my bidding.

There, I commanded.

In a blink, I was by Toby's side. I ripped the shining trail of predator lures to shreds and, with a touch more finesse, removed the one from the back of his head. The flaming light of my presence was enough to cause the pack to retreat with a slithering hiss.

Toby went rigid and fell over.

"Tee!"

He cringed back from me, fumbling to draw a sword.

I realized with a start that he didn't recognize me. My voice was coming out as a layered chorus of outreach, and I probably looked like a swirling mass of feathers and glowing eyes and stretching hands in a pool of blinding light. Just a bigger, shinier predator in this dimension. Goddamned nephil aura.

With an internal wrench that felt like I was ripping my guts out, I shifted into something close to human-standard perceptual outerwear. I didn't quite make it back to Earth-normal, and I couldn't speak for a moment from the unbelievable pain of the abrupt shift, but it would do.

"Sarah!" Toby's eyes were wide, not quite believing.

"Tee, honey, I'm here." I reached my hands out to him. "And what the hell are you doing with a sword in this dimension? An M1911 would work wonders, but a sword? Really?"

"My God, it is you." A high-pitched laugh leaked out of him. "I've been searching for you..."

I enfolded him in my arms. "I know, sweetie. I know."

"Sarah, I'm so glad I found you..." His voice broke into a hyena cackle. It was probably the poison madness of the lure that had sunk into him. Or maybe just the consolidation of whatever he had gone through to get this far. With no fucking help from me.

I held him tighter, stroking the back of his head. "Shhhh, Tee honey. I'm here. I'm here." With the full nephil mantle, I could see into him, could see the broken, splayed paths of his mind. I could also see how to repair the damage. It wouldn't be easy but it could be done, and I owed him that much at the very least.

With another mental command, I bridged us to my old place on Earth, which I fervently hoped was still standing.

The condo was, in fact, still there. It's good to have automatic payments set up for everything. I had enough savings to keep the place afloat for a little over a year, so it couldn't have been more than that since I left. Small favors.

I laid Toby on the bed and looked at him. He had passed out during the bridging to here. Back in the hell dimension, his face had been ragged, but it had smoothed in sleep. Only a few lines I didn't remember remained around his eyes and forehead. Too many for a normal year in a teenager's life.

I sighed. My fault. My goddamned fault.

But I could fix most of it. And I could give him mental acuity and armor that would give him some protection against this kind of thing in the future.

Taking a deep breath, I placed my hand on his head and began.

It was a delicate, painstaking process. His mind was a different kind of labyrinth than Jareth's aura, but a labyrinth nonetheless with malleable, branching paths that harmonized just so when their fractal dimension was correct. I could sense it, almost hear it when the harmony emerged. There were trillions of these paths waiting to rejoin the harmonious whole, and I reshaped each with lightning precision, one by one by one. When I could, I added hints of the counterpoint harmony that I saw in Jareth's aura and now knew was in mine. Mental hardiness and dexterity, in B minor.

It was slow work from the sheer number of paths, and I didn't dare rush in case I missed any.

My internal time sense tracked Chaotic Zone time for me, and thank God the two dimensions didn't align. Toby's reconstruction was going to take far longer than thirteen hours Earth time.

Twenty six hours later, Toby slowly blinked his eyes open. His expression was pained and slightly confused. "Sarah?"

I squeezed his hand with the one that wasn't resting on his forehead. "Hey, Tee."

"I thought I'd dreamed you again."

"You didn't, honey. You found me. But you were hurt, and you need to rest a little more."

"Don't leave me."

I squeezed his hand again, my eyes burning. "I won't." For at least a little longer. I had a little more than three hours Chaotic left. "Now sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

He closed his eyes, a smile on his face.

Just a little longer, Tee, and you'll be as better as I can make you.

Seven Earth hours later, I was so close to completion, I could taste it. The harmony of Toby's mind was beautiful and almost whole, the counterpoint woven through it like a golden net.

With a pang like a tolling bell, I felt the Chaotic time running out, down to seconds.

Just a few more paths, and his reconstruction would be complete. My hand was cool against Toby's forehead, his human warmth rising naturally against my skin. A few more moments, please, that's all-

The shattering of my promise to Jareth was agony through me as the thirteenth Chaotic hour dropped away into oblivion. Phantom things curled inside me, hooking and shrieking and smoking. But Toby's mental paths were almost finished, and I pushed through the pain, waiting it out, shaking with the effort of completing my work.

When it was done, I slumped back, exhausted and hollowed out. But triumphant.

Toby opened his eyes then, a beautiful clarity sparkling inside them.

I smiled wearily at him. "Hey, Tee."

But Toby didn't smile back at me. His brow furrowed as he focused inward. After several long moments, he asked, "What have you done to me?"

I felt the blood drain from my face, icy fear burrowing in my chest. "What do you mean?"

"I'm...different. Weirdly different. You didn't just fix me - you did something." His face contorted in concentration. "What did you do, Sarah?"

My voice felt like a stone in my throat, pressing down until I could hardly speak. "I've made you stronger. I've given you the perceptual armor and skill you need without the years of training."

He looked at me, a horrified comprehension dawning in his eyes. "You've changed me into a monster. Into a thing like Jareth." He spat out the syllables as if they were poisonous. His eyes widened suddenly and he scooted back from me. "God, into a thing like you! What have you done, Sarah?"

My breath caught, aching, stifling.

"Get away from me, nephil," he hissed.

"Tee, I-"

"Get out."

Tears streaming down my face, I fled, bridging back to my room at the Chaotic palace in a blurred, hurting tornado of thought.

I was lucky the interdimensional stuff was feeling particularly gracious at that moment, since my directions were decidedly half-assed from my emotional distress. Nephil aura bonus, check.

The ironic unfairness of it all crashed through me when I arrived, staring at the door to my room. I had managed to fail everyone by doing what I thought was best. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Well, I could at least see what I could do to fix my broken promise to Jareth. He was probably waiting inside my room to lord it over me and exact his pound of flesh. I sighed. That was fair, at least. I pushed open the door and went in.

The place was dark and filled with emptiness, an absence of presence.

I sighed again. It would serve me right if Jareth was supremely ticked off at me and letting me stew on my own for awhile. It couldn't be much fun to go around without your aura here. I yanked open the bed curtains and prepared to fling myself onto the bed for a good solid pity party.

But Jareth was there, stretched out on my bed.

Except that he wasn't, not quite. He seemed to be almost collapsing in on himself, a shadow of a whisper of a dream. So ephemeral, like a sketch of bones and stardust. Like the effigy of a tomb.

"Jareth, no..." The words bled out of me in a gush of guilt and horror, and then my borrowed nephil mantle thrust forward to fill that emptiness, dragging my body and my own aura with it. I lay against him, careful not to press too hard in case he collapsed completely. We were shrouded in eyeful flames and sussurrating feathers, the tide of them flowing between us, filling and emptying in bursts of ecstasy and despair.

He opened his eyes, unspeakable need burning in them.

I looked back at him, unflinching and desperate.

"Insane yet?" His voice was the faintest breeze of fluttering feathers.

I choked out a small laugh. "Not the way you mean. And you better not leave me now. Not after all this."

His lips quirked into a pained half-smile. "Have you solved my Labyrinth?"

Awareness snapped through me of the tiny velvet paths inside him that I was filling again and again and again, in riotous abandon. "And what if I think I have?"

"Say it." The breath sputtered out of him. "Name the four things you give to me now."

I felt the iron pulse of ritual, the saunter and swirl of what-if and could-be. The crossroads had come: the way forward or the way back.

Well, Toby had made it very clear that the way back was barred. I had gone far too far without even realizing it. And once again, there was no more time, not here.

I took a deep breath. Since I'm pointed that way, I guess I'll go down. "These things I give to you..." I took his hands in mine, letting fingers and talons merge. "Something old: Failure by giving someone what they needed. Something new: It's me failing Toby, instead of you failing me." I pressed my chest to his, letting the fractal tide of our auras build. "Something borrowed: The mantle you gave me so I could do it. Something blue: This binding you've woven between us ever since the first night I came back." I hummed our blues tune, my mouth hovering just above his. "You devious nephil bastard."

His smile was bright as the heavens as his eyes flashed solid black. "Welcome to the club." And he kissed me long and full.

When I drew back, I knew that I was one of them now, having somehow kindled the dormant spark of my bloodline through the completed ritual. We had skirted the brunt of my ancestor's death curse through a dissolution technicality. A damned clever one that I didn't quite understand, admittedly. But I could feel the unspooled heft of it, like a fallen domino train. I'd simply have to ask Jareth to clarify the exact how of it later. At the moment, I was officially spent.

Jareth, however, was positively spritely. His muchness was back in full flare, his presence cascading over us both, almost overpowering in the confines of the room.

I felt wings of flame unfurled behind me, glittering with mismatched eyes, and I stared at my hands, willing them to shift to fragile human fingers. But the talons stayed, deadly and perfect.

He took my hands in his, rubbing his talons against mine. I hadn't realized how sensitive the flesh near the tips was. I shivered in pleasure, and then in self-pitying misery.

"Tsk, honey love, it's not all bad." He stroked razor tips through my eyeful aura, which I felt as keenly as another skin. "I promise you can still be a scourge to demonkind in your spare time. Quite a respectable hobby among nephilim."

I looked up at him, startled.

"What, how do you think I learned enough to teach you?"

I blinked. "Isn't that a conflict of interest, what with the nephilim eating souls on occasion and all?"

"Mmm...think of it as protecting our territory."

I raised an eyebrow. "If there's going to be human soul eating, it's going to be done by us, by God?"

"Precisely. Also, we prefer to think of it as soul transmuting."

I pressed the knuckles of my talons against my forehead. "Hard to pretend to be a force for the Light Side when we 'transmute' the eternal essence of living beings."

"Don't pretend. The Light Side is for seraphim, honey love. It's nice to visit but it's not what nephilim are made of. You'll see."

"What exactly are nephilim made of?"

He smiled like a fiend, thoroughly enjoying himself. "You'll find out in time."

I rolled my eyes. "Are all nephilim this smugly secretive or is it your special talent?"

"Well, how secretive are you feeling?"

The words hit me like a hammer to my chest. For a moment, caught up in our typical banter, I had almost forgotten. Then, bolstered by a spurt of well-fuck-it-all, I slashed at him with one of my talons, leaving a gouge in his chest. "Myself, I'm feeling refreshingly direct."

The entirety of him burned, a swelling roar of anger obliterating my visuals. But then, to my shock, he laughed. It was a bright, pleased sound like echoing bells as the room faded back to standard palatial opulence. "So young," he whispered, tracing the line of his wound with one shining talon and coiling a strand of my aura lazily into it. "So new. I'd forgotten what it's like to be so new."

I crossed my arms, ignoring the sensual pull of his talon. "Well, aren't we just full of things to teach each other."

"Oh yes, honey love. Yes, we are."

The End. Well, at least of this tale - the Beauty-and-the-Beast frame seemed to end pretty naturally here. ;) Thanks again for sharing this B&B random genre mashup ride with me! It's been delightful amounts of fun (at least for me). And thanks again for all the wonderful comments, favoriting, and follows for this story. My writerly heart squees in your general direction.